Generally, an image scanner device is connected to a general information processing apparatus such as a personal computer or a work station (hereinbelow, generally referred to as a “PC”) via a SCSI (Small Computer System Interface) or a USB (Universal Serial Bus) interface.
As applications of the image scanner device, optical character recognition (OCR), filing and other various applications are known. In recent years, the variety of uses for the image scanner device such as generation of attachment to an electronic mail is further increased.
On the other hand, in workplaces, employees respectively use one PC, and the PCs are connected to a network to share network resources (files, printers etc.). As it is desirable that the image scanner device can also be shared on the network, several network-connectable scanner devices (generally many of them have a complex machine form) are known, however, such devices are very expensive.
As a response to the requirement, Japanese Published Unexamined Patent Application No. 2001-285560 discloses a device for connection between an image scanner device having a SCSI interface to a network, a scan box, provided between the scanner device and the network. The scan box communicates with an application which operates on a particular PC on the network. Then the content of operation on the scan box side (e.g., notification of depression of start button) is notified to the PC, then job information specific to an operator is received from the PC. Then, a read image is transferred to a file server and stored there in accordance with the received job information.
According to the technique disclosed in the above patent document, the existing image scanner device can be connected to the network via the scan box, however, as the scan box is controlled by the particular application which operates on the PC, the scanner connected to the scan box can be utilized by the particular application but cannot be utilized by a general application such as a graphic application.
Further, this technique of enabling connection between an existing image scanner to a network via the scan box has the following problems.
The scan box is desirably provided with various switches, for example, such as a start button and a scroll button. Therefore, a CPU in the scan box must perform processing in correspondence to each button operation. That is, the processing by the CPU cannot be simplified. Further, in accordance with scanner type, the firmware stored in an internal ROM of the scanner must be updated.